


The World is Going Dim In My Gaze

by Amberly



Series: Just Like Heaven [7]
Category: Gundam Wing
Genre: Gen, PTSD, Panic Attack, Pre-Slash, Present Tense
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-17
Updated: 2020-08-17
Packaged: 2021-03-06 05:46:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,119
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25958503
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Amberly/pseuds/Amberly
Summary: He was a good agent and learning to be a good friend, and he wasn’t going to ruin it all by letting his traitor’s heart beat too loud every time he caught Wufei’s black gaze. Every time he caught the slow, elegant eyebrow raise and quirk of lips like a challenge.
Relationships: Chang Wufei/Duo Maxwell
Series: Just Like Heaven [7]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/405643
Comments: 6
Kudos: 11





	The World is Going Dim In My Gaze

**Author's Note:**

> In which Duo realizes that he has caught feelings and uh. Has a reaction. Major warnings for depiction of panic attack, including panic that manifests as anger. 
> 
> Or: Duo is just Not There Yet
> 
> I have four or five Just Like Heaven drafts in various stages of completeness and I’m not saying they’ll all be posted soon but I am saying they’re coming, and I’m committed to them, and this ‘Verse is still my favorite safe place. Thank you to the people still reading it, still liking it, still sending me kudos. You guys keep me going

His fingers twitch. Clench. Ball. Twitch. Something under his skin is skittering, racing red hot along his muscles and clawing its way in to his veins and Duo--stands. Runs a hand through his tangled mass of hair as he inhales, sharp and savage. Its heavy. Weighs his shoulders down even as he tries to stretch. Tries to undo the weird knot behind his ribs that doesn't hurt as much as it speeds. As much as it feels like a free-fall and the ground, so much closer than he thought. If it would only break, he thinks to himself. If it would only--shatter. Break apart into so many pieces, unwedge from his chest, blow away in the wind. 

The office door is closed. His office door, he reminds himself. Grounding techniques. The floor under his feet is solid. Carpet, shoes sinking in just a little. There’s the smell that’s not a smell he associates with Preventers. The weird blankness of scent that’s somehow bottled and sprayed along with cleaning agents after work. Duo bends himself forward just enough to rest his hands on his desk. Cool. Wood. Solid. His fingers follow a whirl and his eyes go with it. Lose themselves for a while in the infinite spirals, the rich browns. There’s a nick, on the edge. Trowa, playing with a knife. Letting it come down wrong. Duo feels his breath center, feels the slow steadiness regrowing within him and sits. Rests his elbows on the desk and his forehead in his hands and exhales, shakey. The tremor echos through the rest of him and exits with what little energy he had left, leaving him slumped and weak in his office chair, the fluorescent light too bright and too loud. 

Everything was going fine. Everything had been fine for weeks and weeks, and he was coping. He was learning how to take the small pieces of himself that felt things they shouldn’t and tuck them away. Compartmentalized. He was a good agent and learning to be a good friend, and he wasn’t going to ruin it all by letting his traitor’s heart beat too loud every time he caught Wufei’s black gaze. Every time he caught the slow, elegant eyebrow raise and quirk of lips like a challenge. 

Quatre’s fault. Quatre and that drive, how close they’d been and the smell of cloves clinging to his skin. Staining it the same way blood did. The way Wufei followed him when no one else would, climbed skyscrapers and a mountain of emotional baggage to sit quietly and make off-color jokes at his side. And now the house, a marvel Wufei had designed for them—for them!—with space for his metalwork and a bedroom on the second floor with a skylight so he could see the stars and Quatre—

_ “I didn’t realize you two were buying a house together! That’s a big step. I’m proud of you.”  _

Quatre ruined everything. Quatre, with his spaceheart and his perceptiveness and his good intentions. They’re friends. Good friends. Best friends and Duo—

Heaves and lunges for his trash can. Grips the edges and trembles, bringing up all the nothing he had for lunch. Wishes he could reach into his throat and pull his heart out, throw it out with the rest of all his mangled pieces. He should call his therapist. He should take the afternoon off. He should—it cuts off as he heaves again at the thought of saying it out loud. At the thought of making it real, giving it breath and space in the world. As if somehow silence could stop it, as if he could somehow stop it, keep himself to himself and forget about the whole thing. Disappear it the way he could disappear the rest of his inconvenient feelings. 

Duo sinks to the floor and rests his back against the wall (cold, white, hard). He pulls his knees up. Wraps his arms around them (bony, firm, warm). There is bile in his mouth and something cold and roiling settling in the pit of his stomach. A drumbeat in his ears, his heart a screaming bassline as inescapable as his panic. Far across the room is his desk, a shelter he would crawl into if his arms would work. If his legs would. Instead he is limp against the wall. Instead he is useless, too full of feelings and threatening to topple over, skating that edge between himself and his emotions, an edge that’s been there longer than he has words for. 

The anger comes like the change of the tide. Inevitable and overwhelming. Anger at Quatre, who sees too much when he looks, who hears too much in his voice when he calls. At Wufei, for the beautiful slope of his neck, the way his hair falls loose from its ponytail and curls around his jaw. At quiet, tender moments found in the softness of their kitchen, the sharp way he watches all of Duo’s loudbrash spill over a room. A casual, radical acceptance offered with nothing expected and Duo hates, for one moment. Hates how easy it is, for him.

If Wufei loves, he loves with a wholeness Duo can never offer back. He loves in the silences that appear between their sentences during long car rides, in the careful nod of his head when Duo rants. It is writ large in gifts of laughter and grins, the slow teasing out of a person used to being in a shell and Duo doesn’t know how he missed it. Duo has nothing to offer but death. Duo has a heart full of holes and a quicksilver temper, lives in a pit so deep some days he can’t remember if he’s ever seen the sun, and it’s-- 

He hates himself, finally. Hates himself for the wanting he feels, finally. Not just for touch but for More. For bumping elbows in the kitchen prepping dinner. Folding laundry and hushed arguments about whether or not they should get a cat. One day little feet. The family he’s always wanted, as out of reach as the Church. Another collection of ghosts he can’t exorcise. He wants to come home to the easy companionship Wufei offers knowing what it means, knowing what the offer is, and he wants to be able to take it without it tasting like ash on his tongue. 

Duo stands. Duo straightens his tie and brushes back his hair. Duo squares his shoulders and plasters a smile on his face. Shoves himself deep down and lets out a slow exhale, the lurch in his chest just another symptom. Another thing rattling around his brain that makes him off kilter, off balance, a wire ready to snap. 


End file.
